In this interview excerpt, Wilfried Martens, co-founder of the European People’s Party (EPP) in 1976 and President of the EPP since 1990, discusses the circumstances surrounding the preparation of the statutes of the future EPP and also describes his reaction to the party’s failure at the first elections to the European Parliament by universal suffrage in 1979.

In this interview excerpt, Wilfried Martens, co-founder of the European People’s Party (EPP) in 1976 and President of the EPP since 1990, outlines the ideological basis of the party when it was founded and the developments resulting from the 1992 Athens Programme. He also looks at the role played in spreading the EPP’s values by the youth section and the women’s section, as well as by other professional and trade union organisations affiliated to the party.

In this interview excerpt, Wilfried Martens, co-founder of the European People’s Party (EPP) in 1976 and President of the EPP since 1990, explains the role played by the EPP, via various political foundations such as the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, in organising party systems in Central and Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism in the 1980s and 1990s.